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Marvelously directed, the film opens on the Vietnam Veteran's Wall in Washington, DC to the strains of Philip Glass's excellent and chilling musical score. The names on the Wall blend to become the elephant grass of South Vietnam where the 101st are pinned down and in the process of pulling back.
We soon meet the new recruits, the cherries, the FNGs, as they are taken into the squad of Sgt Franz. We stay with this squad as they face their fears and address their heroism on the slopes of Hill 937 in the Ashau Valley.
Granted, the story is not the most imaginative: men go up hill and get shot, but it is not just the story that makes the film. The excellent direction, music and strong acting of the then mostly unknown actors merge to offer us 90 minutes of some of the most gory war pictures seen.
It is sad that this film was released so soon after Platoon as it never received the praise it deserved - perhaps the reviewers were not yet ready for such excellence?
This film is so good that my first copy wore out. I can give it no better recommendation than that. JB
Its timing was unlucky, its budget was low and it had precious little star content, with no real Hollywood talent in it at all. Maybe that's what made this work so well. What it does is *keep everything low key*. There aren't really any outstanding stills to grab from the film, no crowning scene that'll idolise it in film history. There's no brazen theme blaring out through your speaker systems. There's no classic lines, artistic shots or tear-jerking scenes at all. In fact, it makes the whole thing, the whole squad look so... boring, tired and sometimes even pathetic that it feels like it's got to be real. If a guy gets hit and horribly injured there's no violin music, no close reaction shots of characters' horror (ok, only once but that's because he looked like he was about to be sick).
At only a hundred and five minutes it's fairly short, but it often feels longer when you watch it straight through, and that's exactly what Irvin must have been aiming for. You're just watching these grunts swear at each other, moan about the s**t they've gotten into, and die in a pathetic and bloody heap in some water-filled mudhole. It becomes a ponderous meat grinder and almost as soon as you actually start to give a damn about any of the squad they get shot to bits or blown up. You begin to wonder if anyone will survive it at all.
If John Wayne made the original war movies, then this has to be the ultimate alternative: no glory, just guts (and many other body parts). It doesn't patronise and it doesn't insult you by shoving big anti-war messages in your face; it just lets you see for yourself.
An excellent film on a featureless disk, it has to be worth having on your shelf. I'm awarding it Four Stars on the strength of the film alone; no lover of war movies should be without it.
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